Your Podcast Is Easy To Igonore

Related Posts:
Podcasting’s Image Problem
The Center of Podcasting
Podcasting is Ron Popeil for Radio

Elsewhere:

“I’m doing my best to find a show that doesn’t spend most of it’s time discussing the goods or services of a third party” – Conrad Slater

Conrad, might I suggest the First Crack podcast

“The slicker you make your show, the more it looks like a Pepsi commercial. It also gets less interesting to me…” – Dave Slusher

Oh, Canada?

We’re watching some Degrassi Junior High tonight and a bit about the U.S. invading Canada came up. Now, it may surprise you that my public school education didn’t discuss the multiple times we invaded (War of 1812, Fenian Raids of the 1860s), or planned to, our northern neighbors.

First I heard of an invasion was Canadian Bacon. Oh, and History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History.

(related note: Numb3rs is written just like Degrassi)

How Can You Resist the Chevy Tahoe?

Obey the Machines' Every Command

Chevy decided to open up the art direction of their new Tahoe to the world. Brilliant idea. This falls under the ‘spell your name right’ category of publicity.

From my perspective, it doesn’t matter if people create ads critical of the vehicle, they’re still creating ads for the vehicle. Which means they’re talking about the vehicle.

The image above is my experiment with the clips GM made available. Click it to make your own.

And if anyone knows how to pull a copy of it locally, lemme know. Thanks.

Forrester Confirms Podcasting Isn’t Interesting

Recently, I was asked for a list of the top 25 podcasts. Period. Like a list of top foods, another attribute is required to have any value (fruits, husband-wife chatter, technology, frozen, music, independent, sparkly).

I’ve said it before – Podcasting is more like voicemail than radio.

Forrester’s Charlene Li backs me up with two points:

  1. Podcasting is hard to accurately measure. (Seth Godin just said, “there are important things you can’t measure”)
  2. Podcasting existing audio is more valuable than creating something new.

I’m pretty impressed that with all the hype, the interesting things with podcasting are still happening outside the scope of the analysts and the podcast directories.

More on the podcasting-as-voicemail from Rex Hammock:

“I believe podcasting’s greatest impact will be as a personal medium for small groups — as small as two”

Loving the Market – Hating the Marketer

“Dependency breeds resentment. Marketers resent consumers, because marketers are dependent on consumers.” – Dave Rogers

Dave nails a mentality that’s troubled me for years. Whether marketers and their customers or agencies and their clients. There’s an underlying resentment rampant in the ‘creative’ world – and I just don’t get it.

Part of it feels like people in a job they’d rather not be in.

Part of it feels like the marketer’s resistance to committing to themselves into their customers’ lives and perspectives, i.e. a meaningful relationship.
Too often, it feels like marketers want to throw a grenade into a crowd of customers chatting comfortably.

Speaking of chatting. I spent an hour this afternoon talking with my insurance agent. We had a great time. Laughed a bunch, crunched some numbers, made some changes. She’s one of my favorite people. We wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for insurance (she was selling, I was buying). She knows quite a bit about me, my family, and my business – she needs to. I want her to.

If I got the slightest impression she resented doing business with me, I’d be pissed.

Amazing Race Season 9 Episode 6

I’ve said it before, BJ & Tyler are the best AR team yet; well-traveled, playful, multi-lingual, beards. The fake sign-up list was brilliant.

Also brilliant – the Dentists requesting a clue not from the designated grounds keeper.

Detour: Big Fish or Little Fish
Big Fish. Big Fish. Running through the city with swordfish is much more effective than trying to get the city to come to you. Oh, and the fish-over-the-shoulder technique is much more effective than carrying it out in front of you.

Roadblock: Kayak Polo
This is one of the coolest sports ever. I should start a league. Anyone got a kayak?

Garrick’s Favorites

  • BJ & Tyler – #2
  • Dave & Lori – eliminated. Jen’s reaction, “blah blah blah.”
  • Ray & Yolanda – (I missed it, hmmm. oh well)

Pre-Amazing Race Season 9 Episode 6

Hey all. CBS changed the time Amazing Race is on. Now, Tuesday is just Garbage Day. Not Amazing Race & Garbage Day.

Anyway a couple things in preparation for tonight’s installment.

There’s some other Amazing Race bloggers:

Phil’s got a blog too. Just no RSS feed. I’m sorry Phil. Your blog’s been eliminated.

That Giant Buzzing Sound You Hear is Me-dia Filtering and Aggregating

Fellow local me-dia mogul Chuck Olsen got some nice press in the Sunday Strib this week.

A nice write up, and I’m glad Chuck got the press – he deserves it. Afterwards though, I had the distinct feeling that the Strib, in their haste to cover every base, actually missed the interesting bits (that you can and should do this too). I’ve had this feeling (completely missing the story) frequently as of late with traditional media (their-dia?). Enough that Jen’s tired of me commenting on it.

Thankfully, Jeff Jarvis is more articulate in describing this emptiness than I. Here’s some choice quotes from his latest must-read post, Not Quite, Times;

“The problem is that [traditional media publishers] still think the internet is something the powerful use to affect the rest of us. Wrong. It’s what the rest of us use to affect the powerful.”

“…politicians never owned politics and the businesses never owned the market and journalists never owned the news. The people do.”

The Strib delivers readers to advertisers in exchange for a printing and distribution. There are no ads on this site (either that, or it’s full of ads). This post is as much ‘note to self’ as ‘something interesting to share’.

Existing media outlets, like the Strib and the Utne, are in the same business I am – filtering and aggregation. I aggregate my filters and redistribute, my filters aggregate theirs and redistribute. Same for them. How about you?

A Use Case for Identity XML – Demographic Surveys

Stowe Boyd’s running a reader survey. I’ve followed Stowe from Get Real to /Message and thought I’d check out the survey.

Standard demographic stuff; age, gender, household income, zip code, employment status, profession, internet usage, etc. Those common questions attempting to build an anonymous picture of people without actually getting involved with them.

Reading through the questions, the myth of blogs-as-conversation fell away. Stowe doesn’t know who I am – or you are – at all.

If he did, he wouldn’t need to ask these questions – because we’ve already answered them. All of us. Somewhere – if only at the BackBeat Media survey, or in our My.Yahoo.com.

I’d don’t mind giving this info. It’s just annoying to answer the same question twice. I’d much rather just point a URL at the survey.

In the same way I’d prefer to point a URL at my current photo than upload it _again_ to another website (43things, Stikipad, Eventful, or Amazon, Technorati etc).

I’m wondering if there’s an XML specification (or something like it) for the basic identity info all these surveys (read marketers) want. For example:

<BirthYear>1974</BirthYear>
<Gender>M</Gender>
<ZIP>55418</ZIP>
<ChildrenCount>1</ChildrenCount>

I could spin a file with this info, host it, maintain it, and provide brief glimpses into for the right price (so could you).

Yes, this is the Customer as Silo idea, feels like there’s some intention economy connection as well. No, I didn’t complete the survey.